Thursday, October 07, 2004

 

Mythril Harvest

When I talk to the uninitiated about Final Fantasy XI, there is always a "huh?" moment. This is going to be one of them.

Some months ago, I had Gryffyn take up gardening to make money. He practiced by growing flowers and corn for his cooking. Eventually I got brave and decided to plant some tree cuttings to grow tree saplings. That worked great. I then decided to replant the saplings in the hopes of growing ore.

"Huh?"

Yes, in Vana'diel plants can grow minerals as fruit. Don't think about it too hard, just go with it. In August, Gryffyn grew five saplings and got a valuable water ore and some mythril leaves. (Mythril is that stuff dwarves go ga-ga over in The Lord of the Rings. Apparently it's common to many fantasy worlds.) I sold the water ore at the Jeuno Auction House for a nice 240,000 gil--by far the most money Gryffyn has ever had at once.

Now my second character, Baggaholden, is in charge of gardening. (You see, he's always at home, unlike Gryffyn who is always out in the world adventuring. It's much easier to tend the plants if you're the housebound type.) Today, Baggaholden harvested ten more saplings in hopes of getting another water ore. Here's Bagga and all his trees:



To successfully grow a water ore, you need to follow a certain schedule, following the elemental days of the week and so forth. The phase of the moon is apparently also important. Here are the important moments in the growing of this orchard of trees:

* 9/15/04 -- planted 10 tree saplings on Watersday; moon was 90% (full moon)
* 9/24/04 -- fed a water crystal to all 10 trees on Watersday; moon was 5% (new moon)
* 10/1/04 -- fed a second water crystal to all 10 trees on Watersday; moon was 24% (waxing crescent)
* 10/7/04 -- harvested all 10 trees on Watersday; moon was 14% (waning crescent)

If you want to grow a water ore, you do all the important things on Watersday, and you feed your plants only water crystals. (Yes, you feed them minerals as well, which might explain the mineral fruits!) Aside from this, you have to "Examine" all your plants each and every Earth day, or they'll wither and die. Gardening in FF XI is best left to the slightly obsessive.

So how did we do? Did we score another expensive water ore? Let's see the results. I'll break them down pot by pot because my fellow gardeners like that sort of thing:

Brass Pot --> 16 mythril leaves
Brass Pot --> 12 mythril leaves
Porcelain Pot --> 12 mythril leaves
Porcelain Pot --> 3 fire clusters (each fire cluster breaks apart to make 12 fire crystals)
Porcelain Pot --> 2 fire clusters
Brass Pot --> 13 mythril leaves
Brass Pot --> 16 mythril leaves
Brass Pot --> 15 mythril leaves
Earthen Pot --> 14 mythril leaves
Earthen Pot --> 14 mythril leaves.

No water ores! I'm now 1-for-15 in growing those. On the other hand, in the last few months the recipe for growing elemental ores has become well known. Everyone's doing it, and the market is glutted. Water ore now sells for 100,000 gil at the Jeuno Auction House. NPCs in Bastok buy Mythril leaves for 824 gil each. Fire clusters sell for 3000 each. Total gross take from this harvest? 107,288 gil.

Not bad, but did I make a profit? I grew the tree saplings from 10 tree cuttings. The tree cuttings cost me about 35,000 gil. It took 40 Earth days to grow the cuttings into saplings, and then grow the saplings and harvest them. I have 5 surplus tree saplings left over from the cuttings. I can sell those for about 8,000 each. So I made 112,000 gil over 40 days, which is only 2,800 gil a day. That's not a terrific profit, to be honest. If it took more than 2 minutes a day to maintain the plants, it would be a colossal waste of time. I think I'll switch back to growing corn, which grows very fast. I use that to make insect paste, which makes me about 6,000 gil a day in net profit--more if I'm growing my own corn!

Jefferson 5:20 PM

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